


with each love cut loose, i was never the same

by potstickermaster



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: 5+1, F/F, i dont fucking know what this is im sorry, just feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 12:18:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18315137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potstickermaster/pseuds/potstickermaster
Summary: The five women in Carol Danvers’ life who came and left, and the one that stayed.





	with each love cut loose, i was never the same

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of the fics i promised for that march fuckery thing and it’s more a mess than usual i’m sorry i don’t know anymore
> 
> title from Hozier’s “Would That I”

i.

New York was a fever dream, more than anything.

A hitched ride here, a few friends there, and Carol found herself in the middle of the city that never sleeps. Her father would have a heart attack if he knew, if he _cared,_ but the sounds of the city were music to her ears and everything else was just be a matter of the past now—life in Boston, her years in college, the military, the dreams of being an astronaut.

There were still stars in her eyes and the old book about the cosmos under her bed, in the small shoebox apartment she managed to score. Nothing much, but it was a place to sleep in. She began to work odd jobs. New York was unforgiving but she was tough if anything, and tough works: Bartending, waitressing, valet, until she got hooked up with a security agency who saw potential in her.

She became a private bodyguard after a few months, dapper in her black and white suit and tie, if she said so herself.

Her first assignment was Diana Prince.

Ms. Prince was a perfect client—she didn’t ask questions when Carol stopped her from going into a room so she could give it one or three sweeps, just waited patiently it was all clear. Carol didn’t really ask why she needed a bodyguard, though she assumed it had something to do with the projects she was doing with The Met. Other than having to keep company, Carol didn’t have much to do.

At least until she began to do, well, Ms. Prince. _Diana,_ she finally insisted that first night, and Carol didn’t really dare go against her will. The first night was hot and messy and tasted of wine, and the second one they pretended that nothing happened, but come the third, just when Carol knocked on Diana’s hotel room to do a final sweep and say good night, she was invited inside and, well, things happened. Again.

Things happened for the next three weeks, and by the fourth, Carol watched Diana pack her bags to get ready for her flight back to France. It was always inevitable, Carol knew, but as Diana picked apart her life in New York and pack it into her suitcase, Carol wondered if this was how easy it was to leave a life behind. Had it been this easy when she left?

“Will you miss me?” She asked. It was supposed to be a joke; it came out light, after all, but Diana looked at her like her words carried weight and Carol felt _worried_ for a moment.

Diana smiled and walked to where Carol sat on the bed of the hotel room Diana made home in. “You know I would.”

Carol pulled her to her lap. Diana straddled her easily, their skins touching if it weren’t for the fabric of clothing they still wore. She kissed Diana—hungry, desperate, lonely, but Diana pulled back after a while and smiled that smile that made Carol ache. It shouldn’t, but days of knowing Diana and nights of breaking her graceful composure and the knowledge that they will no longer be stung more than it should.

“But you know this was all it would be, Carol,” Diana said, and Carol hated that she was right. She was always right. _Harder, you won’t hurt me,_ or _you look better with just your necktie on,_ or _less sugar can mean more energy, Carol,_ or _you have nothing to prove to your father, or to anyone._

The blonde nuzzled her nose and sighed. Warm hands settled on Diana’s thighs, tracing the softness of skin that Carol already memorized.

“I know.”

They made the most of the time that was left, and when Diana was gone and Carol was at the hotel room bar downing her second glass of whiskey, she wondered if the ache in her chest was heartbreak because she had learned to love Diana, or if her presence was mere companionship and with her gone, Carol was left with loneliness.

She never really figured out which was worse.

 

ii.

College had been a time of mistakes. And learning, too, but also a lot of mistakes. When Carol thinks she’s done something awfully tragic, she remembers the one time she outdrank a frat boy, then proceeded to dive off a table and break it in half. Sometimes, she feels better.

Sometimes, she misses Boston. It was home for the longest time, though she never quite really knew what home was, not when her soul felt like searching the universe for a place to call hers. But college was close enough.

College reminded her of Hela. In the months of limbo after high school, Carol met her—artist, activist, wore lots of black and even more eyeliner—at an exhibit she was required to go to. It was the whole goth attire and bold speech about anarchy that captured Carol in. It was Hela’s fire that made her stay.

She was headstrong, stubborn, and a handful, and Carol had read of passionate relationships but never actually understood what it meant until Hela. With her it was always at the extremes: alcohol and fire in her loins, marks on her skin, sex that kept neighbors awake, and midterm papers rushed and almost forgotten, as well as screaming matches and broken mugs across dirty apartment floors.

Hela was a sword—know how to wield her and you can conquer the world, or find yourself struck down. Carol thinks much of their relationship was electric and gratifying because of that—when Hela bit, Carol scratched, and it was with her that she realized how delicious pain could be.

It could never be _just_ delicious, but it was fun until it became too much. Hela was ambitious. Though Carol was supportive of her for the most part, she became too much. Fire, after all, is fine on candlelights and campfires but not when they burn down a village. The _whole_ of her became toxic—her jealousy, her friends, her dreams—and Carol had to let her go, for her own heart, and perhaps, for  Hela to find someone who could keep her, electric love and all.

When Carol thinks of college, she thinks of sleepless nights, coffee in her veins, and Hela on her bed, reaching out for her in the way Carol used to reach out for her own dreams—with both hands and a smile and a raging fire in her heart, at least before the days wore on and all that was left were ash.

 

iii.

Her two years in the military left scars that she can’t find on her skin. Most days, Carol would be grateful—she was one of the luckier ones, after all—but sometimes, she can’t help but hate the universe.

She wasn’t entirely sure what brought her to enlist. Certainly not her father, that’s for sure, but one thing led to another, then she was wearing the uniform and holed up in some dry, hot place with men who thought she wouldn’t dare punch them when they let their eyes stray.

She got in trouble more times she could count. She liked proving people wrong, after all. Maybe Hela did a number on her head. Carol had a few friends back then, and even fewer now.

Valkyrie was one of the few.

Carol thought hers was a pretty cool name. A mouthful, but cool. She insisted being called Val instead, but Carol still full-named her at times. She was fun—stubborn like Hela but didn’t talk of possibly becoming President and banning men in public functions. Val was a bartender in downtown L.A. before she enlisted, and she would sneak in some mixes when they were able to visit town.

And like a true-blue bartender, she listened to Carol talk about the women who have occupied her heart and her bed, until it was her own turn to.

It wasn’t something planned, like these things usually went. Intoxication from laughter and loneliness did things to a person, and Valkyrie was soft as she was strong and Carol had never felt the need to be quiet until that night with her. For all her toughness in the field, Valkyrie took care of Carol like she never experienced before, and wondered how close the stars might just be when she could see them behind her eyelids as Valkyrie worked between her legs.

She held Carol like she was unbreakable and maybe she was, somehow; when the rain of fire came, Carol left unscathed, but Val wasn’t so lucky.

Carol still feels guilty about things, though Valkyrie only punched her shoulder the last time she dared apologize about, well, everything.

“I don’t need to be able to walk to mix my drinks, Danvers,” she said, that toughness in her smirk betrayed by the softness in her eyes that reminded Carol of the way she kissed her. “Besides. You seem to forget that you saved the rest of me.”

When Carol visits California, they would go to the beach, and she would carry Val on her back before she dunks her in saltwater like how she carried her through fourteen miles of desert and hopelessness until help found them. They would intoxicate each other with laughter and the occasional alcohol, and when Carol kissed her once, Val made her promise it wasn’t out of guilt.

It wasn’t. Loneliness, perhaps, or a search for a piece of the better past, but not guilt. Valkyrie held her like she understood, and though she didn’t stay the night like she did the first time, she stayed quite a while in Carol’s heart.

 

iv.

High school was tough and youth was, more than anything, painful. It shouldn’t be, not when it’s supposed to shape the rest of you for the rest of your life, but it was. Maybe it was precisely because of that. You’re soft flesh until sticks and stones are stabbed and struck at you, and you learn to build walls with them instead.

Home, back when home meant the house she lived in, was somehow near the beach and when she could, Carol would walk all the way to the shore and let the saltwater prune her skin. Youth was a time of exploration, of learning new things about herself, and she stumbled upon Mera like a shell on the beach: unassuming, beautiful. She was a girl from the school over and lived nearby, and Carol saw her everyday after school at the beach until, well, they became friends.

It was easier back then, she supposes.

Mera loved the ocean. The days were spent on the beach, and the first summer burnt their skin and left sand like stars on their softness. Mera did the same in her soul—built palaces of sand in Carol’s young heart and let them stay there until the waves washed them away. Carol discovered a lot of things about her—she loved the ocean and roses and swimming until it was too dark to see, and Carol loved the way she tasted of seawater when they would kiss, the feel of her hair in her hands, the excitement in and the sting of her words when she would say _no one could know,_ and _just between us, okay?_ or _I’m not really sure I like girls but I like kissing you._

Maybe it was why Carol liked her eggs with a little more salt, or why she couldn’t stand the water anymore these days. Youth was a reckless time. Mera loved the ocean and the idea of love and Carol was young and looked at red hair like it was sunrise, the beginning of everything, of love eternal.

Arthur was a boy who loved the ocean, and Mera loved him more. Carol laughs at the memory of that hurting when she has felt much worse now. Youth made her foolish, she likes to think. The years made her wiser, stronger now that she doesn’t need walls of sticks and stones when she could face things head first, bare-handed, and yet still fire would blaze in her gut at the sight of flaming hair as her memories remind her of the girl she once loved.

Carol often wonders, years after, if she did love Mera or if like her, she loved the idea of love, but years after, these things no longer matter.

 

v.

New York became the closest thing Carol had to home. It wasn’t always easy to love—nobody was polite and nothing was sacred in that unholy place—but it was home. She never really moved about of the shoebox apartment; the whole bodyguard thing worked out just fine, sure, but bills need paying and sometimes, a visit to the bar becomes too much.

It was how Carol met Jessica Jones. Private investigator, she said, whiskey in her breath and leather on her frame, and asked for the remaining finger in Carol’s glass before asking about her previous client. Some cheating diplomat, she said.

Carol knew about that, of course. The whole non-disclosure agreement had her keep mum about it, but people could just assume Jessica was a great investigator, right? So she told Jessica what she needed to know—for the kicks, for a messed up view of justice—bought her a drink because she seemed to need it, and they talked the rest of the night—or at least, sat in almost silence, drinks in hand, and here and there they would say something dark or mildly amusing to the other.

Funny how things like this went sometimes; Carol was ready to burn the week away, and she found someone who had already done that and didn’t quite seem to enjoy it. Maybe it was how opposites attract or something like that—Jess was rough around the edges and definitely colder than anyone Carol has ever met, and yet, this was the very reason she was pulled into Jessica’s orbit.

“Drinking makes me forget,” Jess said once, in her mess of an apartment-slash-office. “Sometimes it makes me forget how to be a decent person, too. Or. I don’t know.” A shrug, a tired sigh. “I just forgot it altogether.”

It was a personal thing. Even Carol was surprised to hear it, but she took it in stride and ignored it like Jessica expected her to. She never brought it up again, even when she’d find Jessica crying in the darkness of her apartment because of nightmares of a man who used and left her for dead. Carol held her each time, cooed that it wasn’t her fault, that alcohol won’t help, but all she could really do was be there while Jess allowed her to be.

She did, for a while. They become best friends in the way where you don’t acknowledge that you are the best of friends, because Carol thinks you can’t really have much of a choice in best friends when you only have one to choose from.

Which, really, made the pool of people to fall in love with much, much smaller.

It went as well as people who fall in love with their best friend go: quiet, messy, one-sided. Carol fell slowly, perhaps never fully gotten there, and well, Jessica was just Jessica—cold and angry but warm and sad in ways only Carol knew.

Her capacity for love had been eroded by alcohol and sadness,  Jessica once said with a bitter laugh, and Carol wanted to tell her that she could wait, that she could love her on her behalf until Jessica could, but Jessica Jones was more stubborn than all the women in her life combined and stronger than Carol herself. When Jessica told her to let go, Carol held on a little more, a little more, just a little more, until she realized she wasn’t holding on any longer.

 

vi.

How did that quote from Tennyson go? That it’s better to have loved and lost or something. Sometimes, the memories of warmth and softness in the quietest of moments shatter her. Sometimes they make her smile, but most times they just leave a sort of longing in her chest because _when_ will she get it right?  

Sure, she’s happy with her life. Fury is a dick sometimes but he is a good friend, and sometimes she wants to punch Tony in the  face but Pepper is a great cook and Carol likes coming over, always with a fond joke of stealing his wife. The security business in New York is booming and Carol got a shiny new badge and finally afforded a better place.

But sometimes, in the mornings she opens her eyes to the empty space on the king-sized bed she invested in, she wishes the women from the night stayed—wishes for maybe Diana, or Hela, or Mera or Val or Jess. Wishes not even for love, sometimes. Just companionship that lasted. She would have thought that all the love she had lost would make her satisfied with being away from that pain, but maybe she was a masochist now. Maybe it’s the loneliness. Maybe it was being in love with love.

Sometimes, she was _fine_ with everything.

It’s a nice Saturday morning, a lovely day for a wedding. Why Peggy and Angie wanted to get married there in Louisiana was a mystery to Carol, but thankfully, the drive was lovely. Carol is dressed to the nines in a blue tailored suit, her short blonde hair slicked back, her secondhand car bright and shiny.

Until it breaks down just as she enters the state.

She pushes it a street or two—thank god she kept with her weight training—to find a car shop. She reeks of sun and sweat when she knocks for some assistance, and the woman in dark green overalls working on an old Beetle smirks at the sight of her.

“Lost?”

Carol sighs and gestures behind her. “I wish. My car broke down.”

The woman raises an eyebrow. She wipes her hands on a piece of cloth then steps out of her shop to look at the car waiting outside, then at Carol.

“Did you push your car all the way here?”

Carol shrugs. “I had to?”

“You know we have tow trucks, right?”

Carol blinks. “Right. Anyway! Can you fix it? I have a, um, a wedding to go to.”

The woman smirks again. “Hopefully not yours.”

Carol laughs. “Nope. Very much single.” She grins, but then she realizes how that sounded like. “Just. Just throwing it out there.”

“Duly noted,” the woman said. She smiles at Carol—a smile that reminds her of warmth and the beach and electric fire—then gestures behind her. “Do you want some juice? It’ll take a few minutes for me to check your car.”

“Um. Sure.” Carol looks at the woman, then at the direction of the chair she pointed out, but doesn’t move. “I’m… Carol, by the way,” she says, a little awkwardly, like it’s her first time to fucking meet people, and maybe it was.

The woman offers her hand and Carol takes it, holds on a moment, a second longer, forever.

“Maria.”

  
  
  



End file.
